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In The Forest by Edna O’Brien

In the novel In The Forest by Edna O'Brien (2002), the main character, Michen O'Kane, is primarily a victimizer of others, yet he is also a victim. Long before he became a murderer, incapable of feeling empathy for his victims, he was a scared, misunderstood, and lonely child. It is the abuse he suffered as a child that later contributes to his criminal insanity.

O'Kane's suffers the first great blow of his childhood when his beloved mother dies. Her death is a turning point in his life. O'Kane remembers his mother as kind and as his main protector. When his father beats her with a poker, she shouts for O'Kane to run away to the woods while she stays behind to accept the blows. While in the woods, he builds a sentence out of broken sticks that reads, "God hates me, Father hates me, I am hated" (p. 4). The feelings of being unloved and scared for his physical safety are made worse after the death of his mother. This fear leads to his first criminal act, when at the age of ten he steals a gun. He took the gun only for protection and as a way to alleviate his fear, yet the authorities accuse him of having a plan to use the weapon in an act of violence. At the same time, he is accused of cycling over some wet concrete. He knows that another child ruined the concrete, but no one believes him. "No matter what was done wrong, they blamed him, and there was no one to stand up for him, because his mother was dead" (p.4).

In court, the sergeant says that O'Kane stole the gun from a German man and then went home, intent on murder. It is hinted that he wanted to kill his father, although O'Kane says, "I didn't mean to kill, only to frighten one man" (p. 3). Instead of showing compassion for an abused, young boy who has recently lost his mother, the authorities treat him like a hardened criminal. When he steals the gun, the German man calls him "Kinderschreck," meaning someone who scares small children. The nickname "Kinderschreck" sticks to Kane throughout his life and makes him seem monstrous and evil. While his later actions as an adult certainly warrant the title, to call a mere child "Kinderschreck" seems unduly harsh.

O'Kane also vaguely refers to the authorities threatening to drown him in the Shannon River where no one would ever find him because they believed he destroyed the concrete. This is an unusually cruel threat to make towards a child suspected of a minor act of vandalism. Terrified that they will kill him, O'Kane runs to his home, looking for the support of his sister.

"But she wouldn't let him in because she had a friend of hers there and she was ashamed of him. When he asked for a glass of orange, she poured it and put it out on the windowsill and told him to drink it there. That was when he ran away, because no one wanted him and no one believed him and he had no friend" (p.7).

Therefore, O'Kane is left with no immediate support system. His father is abusive, his sister is cold, and the authorities that should be protecting him from further harm have threatened to kill him. He also has no friends in school. This is demonstrated by the reaction of his peers shortly after O'Kane spends his first night alone in the woods in order to hide from his father's violent attack. When his mother comes to retrieve him, she praises him for being brave and calls him a "true son of the forest" (p.6). When he proudly writes that he is a son of the forest on his school copybook, his classmates ridicule him by calling him a sissy and a liar. The reader can assume that the damage to his psyche is devastating. The child already feels worthless and scared, which makes his mother's assurance that he is strong very important to him. When his peers ridicule his declaration of fearlessness, the affect is doubly painful.

Later when O'Kane is taken to his first detention center, his actions show that he is nothing more than a scared child, not an evil villain (at least not yet.) When he is ordered to get out of the car, he clings to his granny, who has shown him some kindness in the past. Once inside the detention center, he is made to wear the same clothes as the other boys. In a particularly touching passage, O'Kane is victimized yet again by an adult who refuses to see his need for love. Brother Finbar forcibly removes the jumper he is wearing. It is special to O'Kane because his mother made it for him before she died. O'Brien uses the description of the jumper to show that O'Kane is still a young boy. It is purple, red, and navy, with a multicolored tassel at the end of the zipper. This is a sweater that only a child would wear, which makes O'Kane seem even more vulnerable and in need of protection.

"It smelt of his mother, and when he wore it, he could feel her soft hands and her kiss. He would not part with it. He would not raise his arms to have it pulled off. Brother Finbar dragged and dragged, then found a lose thread in the waistband and started ripping it… It was like his mother was being ripped up" (p. 9).

The years O'Kane spends in juvenile detention are filled with suffering and abuse at the hands of guards and other boys. He is repeatedly whipped for wetting the bed, which is a behavior that he cannot control. After the first beating, O'Kane learns a coping strategy that he will use throughout his life. A leader among the boys, Lazlo, questions O'Kane about the whipping. Lazlo, who is considered crazy and tough, teaches O'Kane to hate "them," meaning the guards, authorities, and just about anyone else, more than they hate him. It is this coping mechanism that teaches the young victim to become a victimizer. During his detention, O'Kane also learns that he can only survive if he is seen as tough and is able to scare others. At first, he tries to show that he is tough in childlike, harmless ways, such as eating raw potatoes to impress the other boys. Later, his defensive actions become more violent.

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